Little White Marketing Lie #1

Little white marketing lie #1:  We provide exceptional customer service.

It’s a lie when you say it, it’s a lie when your competitor says it.  Why?  Because of exactly that: everyone says it.  When I ask a business owner about the customer experience, it’s usually the first thing that they say.  Obviously, it can’t be true of every business, and if it is true of all the business that make the claim -- sorry, it’s still not true.   Because by definition, in order to be extraordinary requires something to be unusual, remarkable or surprising and outside of the established order.   If everyone is “exceptional,” then no one is.   

The real question is, what about your customer service is surprising or remarkable – so extraordinary – if you will – that clients walk out the door and are compelled to tell other people about it?   If you can’t pinpoint how the customer service your business provides, day in and day out, is truly outside of what your customers expect, it’s not exceptional.  

I would argue that most of what occurs in the vast majority of businesses merely falls within customer expectations. They expect to be treated like guests.  They expect to receive a great service or be fed or entertained or buy a product that does what was promised.  They expect you to stand behind your products and services. They expect you and all of your employees to be cheerful, helpful and uber-knowledgeable about your work, products, new techniques and trends. 

So even if you do all these things, you’re doing no more than meeting your client’s basic expectations.  There is nothing extraordinary about simply meeting expectations!

What’s more, even when it comes to meeting customer expectations, many business owners are lying to themselves.  Take the results of a 2011 Customer Satisfaction Barometer, conducted by American Express: 

• According to the study, 70% of Americans said they would be willing to spend almost 15% more with businesses they believed (really) provided excellent customer service. With such an indicator, you'd think that businesses would make customer service a top priority; but in the same survey, 60% of respondents said they don’t believe businesses are making customer service a high priority.
  
  
• In fact, 26% said they think businesses are actually paying less attention to service.   Only 29% of US consumers said that recent shopping experiences exceeded their expectations.  
  
  
• Only 24% of US consumers believe that you value their business and will go the extra mile to keep it. 
  
  
• 48% of those who said they would not pay more for good service said it’s because they expect good service, every time.  (And why shouldn’t they?)

Why is there a disconnect between what business owners believe to be true about their businesses and what their customers are saying? It seems to be in interpretation.  Most who claim to be providing extra-ordinary customer service are really just meeting their customer's basic expectations.  Most believe they provide an extraordinary experience, but only about one fourth of their customers agree.  Guess what?  That’s why customers aren’t telling their friends and family about your business, and that is why your books are not full and your retail shelves are. 

Customer service is not contained in the actions of a person taking or fulfilling an order, receiving a return or complaint, performing a service or selling a product. Customer service isn’t an action, it’s a process—an intentionally designed system—meant to enhance the customer’s experience and which influences whether a customer feels satisfied or dissatisfied by a product or service.   

It’s not just about making the customer experience “better.” It’s about making it greater in value, bigger and/or more sophisticated – more than that of the competition and more than the customer expects – so that it stands out to the customer as inherently and uniquely extra-ordinary.  To do that, you have to truly understand your customers, you have to revisit and redesign every customer touchpoint, and you must train, educate and empower employees to respond to requests, complaints, unique situations and individual customer’s needs and desires.

If you wonder why people don’t always agree with the claim you make that your business provides “exceptional customer service” or why the customer experience at your business is not helping you gain and retain clients, it’s because what you have in place is not actually enough to influence the customer to feel exceptionally satisfied!

Elizabeth Kraus, Author 365 Days of Marketing - www.12monthsofmarketing.net
Be InPulse branding, marketing and design